The United States Department of Agriculture was founded as a scientific research organization, but ultimately gave way to delivering public policy benefits to select groups. Browne considers the ...establishment of two such USDA agencies, the Bureau of Agricultural Economics and its successor, the Economic Research Service.
Achievement scores among 149 of Georgia's school systems were analyzed by first examining the impact of demographic and socioeconomic variables, and then the marginal impact of educational policy ...variables. Eleventh grade Iowa Tests of Basic Skills results served as the dependent variable in a series of multiple regression models and discriminant functions. A major object of the study was to assess the extent to which policy factors discriminate between school systems that exhibit test scores either substantially above or substantially below those predicted by a baseline demo‐graphic/SES model. The results reaffirm the powerful influences of environment upon absolute school system performance, but also demonstrate the significant marginal contributions of several education policy variables. Education policies were found to discriminate powerfully between systems that performed significantly above and those that perform significantly below regression estimates based upon their demographic/SES characters.
